Chapter 59

"I count myself in nothing else so happy
As in a soul remembering my good friends."
- SHAKESPEARE.

Sir Hugo Mallinger was not so prompt in starting for Genoa as Mr.
Gascoigne had been, and Deronda on all accounts would not take his
departure until he had seen the baronet. There was not only Grandcourt's
death, but also the late crisis in his own life to make reasons why his
oldest friend would desire to have the unrestrained communication of
speech with him, for in writing he had not felt able to give any details
concerning the mother who had come and gone like an apparition. It was not
till the fifth evening that Deronda, according to telegram, waited for Sir
Hugo at the station, where he was to arrive between eight and nine; and
while he was looking forward to the sight of the kind, familiar face,
which was part of his earliest memories, something like a smile, in spite
of his late tragic experience, might have been detected in his eyes and
the curve of his lips at the idea of Sir Hugo's pleasure in being now
master of his estates, able to leave them to his daughters, or at least -
according to a view of inheritance which had just been strongly impressed
on Deronda's imagination - to take makeshift feminine offspring as
intermediate to a satisfactory heir in a grandson. We should be churlish
creatures if we could have no joy in our fellow-mortals' joy, unless it
were in agreement with our theory of righteous distribution and our
highest ideal of human good: what sour corners our mouths would get - our
eyes, what frozen glances! and all the while our own possessions and
desires would not exactly adjust themselves to our ideal. We must have
some comradeship with imperfection; and it is, happily, possible to feel
gratitude even where we discern a mistake that may have been injurious,
the vehicle of the mistake being an affectionate intention prosecuted
through a life-time of kindly offices. Deronda's feeling and judgment were
strongly against the action of Sir Hugo in making himself the agent of a
falsity - yes, a falsity: he could give no milder name to the concealment
under which he had been reared. But the baronet had probably had no clear
knowledge concerning the mother's breach of trust, and with his light,
easy way of taking life, had held it a reasonable preference in her that
her son should be made an English gentleman, seeing that she had the
eccentricity of not caring to part from her child, and be to him as if she
were not. Daniel's affectionate gratitude toward Sir Hugo made him wish to
find grounds of excuse rather than blame; for it is as possible to be
rigid in principle and tender in blame, as it is to suffer from the sight
of things hung awry, and yet to be patient with the hanger who sees amiss.
If Sir Hugo in his bachelorhood had been beguiled into regarding children
chiefly as a product intended to make life more agreeable to the full-
grown, whose convenience alone was to be consulted in the disposal of
them - why, he had shared an assumption which, if not formally avowed, was
massively acted on at that date of the world's history; and Deronda, with
all his keen memory of the painful inward struggle he had gone through in
his boyhood, was able also to remember the many signs that his experience
had been entirely shut out from Sir Hugo's conception. Ignorant kindness
may have the effect of cruelty; but to be angry with it as if it were
direct cruelty would be an ignorant _un_kindness, the most remote from
Deronda's large imaginative lenience toward others. And perhaps now, after
the searching scenes of the last ten days, in which the curtain had been
lifted for him from the secrets of lives unlike his own, he was more than
ever disposed to check that rashness of indignation or resentment which
has an unpleasant likeness to the love of punishing. When he saw Sir
Hugo's familiar figure descending from the railway carriage, the life-long
affection which had been well accustomed to make excuses, flowed in and
submerged all newer knowledge that might have seemed fresh ground for
blame.

"Well, Dan," said Sir Hugo, with a serious fervor, grasping Deronda's
hand. He uttered no other words of greeting; there was too strong a rush
of mutual consciousness. The next thing was to give orders to the courier,
and then to propose walking slowly in, the mild evening, there being no
hurry to get to the hotel.

"I have taken my journey easily, and am in excellent condition," he said,
as he and Deronda came out under the starlight, which was still faint with
the lingering sheen of day. "I didn't hurry in setting off, because I
wanted to inquire into things a little, and so I got sight of your letter
to Lady Mallinger before I started. But now, how is the widow?"

"Getting calmer," said Deronda. "She seems to be escaping the bodily
illness that one might have feared for her, after her plunge and terrible
excitement. Her uncle and mother came two days ago, and she is being well
taken care of."

"Any prospect of an heir being born?"

"From what Mr. Gascoigne said to me, I conclude not. He spoke as if it
were a question whether the widow would have the estates for her life."

"It will not be much of a wrench to her affections, I fancy, this loss of
the husband?" said Sir Hugo, looking round at Deronda.

"The suddenness of the death has been a great blow to her," said Deronda,
quietly evading the question.

"I wonder whether Grandcourt gave her any notion what were the provisions
of his will?" said Sir Hugo.

"Do you know what they are, sir?" parried Deronda.

"Yes, I do," said the baronet, quickly. "Gad! if there is no prospect of a
legitimate heir, he has left everything to a boy he had by a Mrs. Glasher;
you know nothing about the affair, I suppose, but she was a sort of wife
to him for a good many years, and there are three older children - girls.
The boy is to take his father's name; he is Henleigh already, and he is to
be Henleigh Mallinger Grandcourt. The Mallinger will be of no use to him,
I am happy to say; but the young dog will have more than enough with his
fourteen years' minority - no need to have had holes filled up with my
fifty thousand for Diplow that he had no right to: and meanwhile my
beauty, the young widow, is to put up with a poor two thousand a year and
the house at Gadsmere - a nice kind of banishment for her if she chose to
shut herself up there, which I don't think she will. The boy's mother has
been living there of late years. I'm perfectly disgusted with Grandcourt.
I don't know that I'm obliged to think the better of him because he's
drowned, though, so far as my affairs are concerned, nothing in his life
became him like the leaving it."

"In my opinion he did wrong when he married this wife - not in leaving his
estates to the son," said Deronda, rather dryly.

"I say nothing against his leaving the land to the lad," said Sir Hugo;
"but since he had married this girl he ought to have given her a handsome
provision, such as she could live on in a style fitted to the rank he had
raised her to. She ought to have had four or five thousand a year and the
London house for her life; that's what I should have done for her. I
suppose, as she was penniless, her friends couldn't stand out for a
settlement, else it's ill trusting to the will a man may make after he's
married. Even a wise man generally lets some folly ooze out of him in his
will - my father did, I know; and if a fellow has any spite or tyranny in
him, he's likely to bottle off a good deal for keeping in that sort of
document. It's quite clear Grandcourt meant that his death should put an
extinguisher on his wife, if she bore him no heir."

"And, in the other case, I suppose everything would have been reversed -
illegitimacy would have had the extinguisher?" said Deronda, with some
scorn.

"Precisely - Gadsmere and the two thousand. It's queer. One nuisance is
that Grandcourt has made me an executor; but seeing he was the son of my
only brother, I can't refuse to act. And I shall mind it less if I can be
of any use to the widow. Lush thinks she was not in ignorance about the
family under the rose, and the purport of the will. He hints that there
was no very good understanding between the couple. But I fancy you are the
man who knew most about what Mrs. Grandcourt felt or did not feel - eh,
Dan?" Sir Hugo did not put this question with his usual jocoseness, but
rather with a lowered tone of interested inquiry; and Deronda felt that
any evasion would be misinterpreted. He answered gravely -

"She was certainly not happy. They were unsuited to each other. But as to
the disposal of the property - from all I have seen of her, I should
predict that she will be quite contented with it."

"Then she is not much like the rest of her sex; that's all I can say,"
said Sir Hugo, with a slight shrug. "However, she ought to be something
extraordinary, for there must be an entanglement between your horoscope
and hers - eh? When that tremendous telegram came, the first thing Lady
Mallinger said was, 'How very strange that it should be Daniel who sends
it!' But I have had something of the same sort in my own life. I was once
at a foreign hotel where a lady had been left by her husband without
money. When I heard of it, and came forward to help her, who should she be
but an early flame of mine, who had been fool enough to marry an Austrian
baron with a long mustache and short affection? But it was an affair of my
own that called me there - nothing to do with knight-errantry, any more
than you coming to Genoa had to do with the Grandcourts."

There was silence for a little while. Sir Hugo had begun to talk of the
Grandcourts as the less difficult subject between himself and Deronda; but
they were both wishing to overcome a reluctance to perfect frankness on
the events which touched their relation to each other. Deronda felt that
his letter, after the first interview with his mother, had been rather a
thickening than a breaking of the ice, and that he ought to wait for the
first opening to come from Sir Hugo. Just when they were about to lose
sight of the port, the baronet turned, and pausing as if to get a last
view, said in a tone of more serious feeling - "And about the main
business of your coming to Genoa, Dan? You have not been deeply pained by
anything you have learned, I hope? There is nothing that you feel need
change your position in any way? You know, whatever happens to you must
always be of importance to me."

"I desire to meet your goodness by perfect confidence, sir," said Deronda.
"But I can't answer those questions truly by a simple yes or no. Much that
I have heard about the past has pained me. And it has been a pain to meet
and part with my mother in her suffering state, as I have been compelled
to do, But it is no pain - it is rather a clearing up of doubts for which I
am thankful, to know my parentage. As to the effect on my position, there
will be no change in my gratitude to you, sir, for the fatherly care and
affection you have always shown me. But to know that I was born a Jew, may
have a momentous influence on my life, which I am hardly able to tell you
of at present."

Deronda spoke the last sentence with a resolve that overcame some
diffidence. He felt that the differences between Sir Hugo's nature and his
own would have, by-and-by, to disclose themselves more markedly than had
ever yet been needful. The baronet gave him a quick glance, and turned to
walk on. After a few moments' silence, in which he had reviewed all the
material in his memory which would enable him to interpret Deronda's
words, he said -

"I have long expected something remarkable from you, Dan; but, for God's
sake, don't go into any eccentricities! I can tolerate any man's
difference of opinion, but let him tell it me without getting himself up
as a lunatic. At this stage of the world, if a man wants to be taken
seriously, he must keep clear of melodrama. Don't misunderstand me. I am
not suspecting you of setting up any lunacy on your own account. I only
think you might easily be led arm in arm with a lunatic, especially if he
wanted defending. You have a passion for people who are pelted, Dan. I'm
sorry for them too; but so far as company goes, it's a bad ground of
selection. However, I don't ask you to anticipate your inclination in
anything you have to tell me. When you make up your mind to a course that
requires money, I have some sixteen thousand pounds that have been
accumulating for you over and above what you have been having the interest
of as income. And now I am come, I suppose you want to get back to England
as soon as you can?"

"I must go first to Mainz to get away a chest of my grandfather's, and
perhaps to see a friend of his," said Deronda. "Although the chest has
been lying there these twenty years, I have an unreasonable sort of
nervous eagerness to get it away under my care, as if it were more likely
now than before that something might happen to it. And perhaps I am the
more uneasy, because I lingered after my mother left, instead of setting
out immediately. Yet I can't regret that I was here - else Mrs. Grandcourt
would have had none but servants to act for her."

"Yes, yes," said Sir Hugo, with a flippancy which was an escape of some
vexation hidden under his more serious speech; "I hope you are not going
to set a dead Jew above a living Christian."

Deronda colored, and repressed a retort. They were just turning into the
Italia.